This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

Monday, January 10, 2011

Typical Christian Darwinist evolves into 2011

This series of 2011 Christian Darwinist events, hosted by Rev. Michael Dowd, landed in my mailbox. The press release for the 2011 events informs,

The six-part series on EvolutionaryChristianity.com will explore what it means to be Christian in a myth-busting age of scientific discovery. Guests will include prominent, and often controversial, Christians, such as:

Professor Ken Miller, co-author of the most widely-used biology textbook in America, and lead witness in the Dover ‘intelligent design’ trial.

Karl Giberson, vice president of the BioLogos Foundation, an organization that helps conservative Christians integrate their faith with contemporary science.

Brian McLaren, a pastor named by Time magazine as one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.

Ian Lawton, a radical pastor whose church recently made national headlines for removing its cross.

Gail Worcelo, a Catholic nun and co-founder with the late Thomas Berry of Green Mountain Monastery, a new monastic community dedicated to the healing and protection of Earth and its life systems.

Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of Astronomy and the History of Science at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and member of the American Scientific Affiliation, a society of evangelical scientists.

The Ian Lawton story above seems kind of odd when you consider how many Christians have been killed or maimed in recent years for attending places of worship that do have a cross. But I digress.

Overall, these and other Dowd-friendly bios I have seen so far leave little doubt that "Evolutionary Christianity" is, in general, a project for and product of what a friend calls "Churches Nobody Goes to Any More." A dead giveaway is that they're always "evolving" or "transforming themselves" or engaging in "creative destruction," or something or other.

Nothing is sure, not even unsureness - except about Darwin. He's a lodestone now.